Ghosts 'n Goblins
Year Of Release: 1985
Studio: Capcom
Description
Ghosts 'n Goblins was developed and released by Capcom in 1985. Ghosts 'n Goblins was very popular when it was first released as it offered a somewhat “horror” themed gaming experience. This may not sound unusual by today’s standards, but in 1985, Ghosts 'n Goblins stood out against the vast amount of shooters and racing games that populated the arcades. While Capcom may not be in everyone’s good books these days, back then they were very ground-breaking when it came to video games and they could pretty much do no wrong in many gamers eyes.
Ghosts 'n Goblins, sees you playing the role of a noble knight called Sir Arthur. Your girlfriend, Princess Prin Prin has been kidnapped by the evil Satan, King Of The Demon World and now only you can get her back. The game from a story point of view has a little intro and then BAM you are thrown into the action. Story was not really a consideration of many arcade games back in the day. But Ghosts 'n Goblins is a good example of how you can still get across what the point of the game is without having a vast amount of text explaining everything.
Now from a game play point of view Ghosts 'n Goblins was regarded as one of the hardest arcade games of its day and it still has this reputation now actually. Along the way trying to save Princess Prin Prin. Sir Arthur needs to kill zombies, ogres, dragons and many other types of monsters. Some are small and some are large. You have a suit of armour which if you get hit once gets knocked off. Getting hit a second time will see you die! You can get upgrades for your armour and different weapons to help you along your way. The game is known for having some weapons that are just truly useless.
Ghosts 'n Goblins has a very funny or downright cruel depending on how you look at it ending. You see you need to have the cross weapon when you defeat the last boss. If you do not then you must restart back at level 5 even if you beat the boss! If this was not enough once you do beat the boss you are told that the play through was just a trap made up by Satan and you need to play through the game again on a higher difficulty to really beat it. Many arcade machines where kicked and punched when that message came up!
Current High Score: 1,000,100 by David Nelson
Related Titles
Ghosts 'n Goblins was very popular so popular that it was latterly ported to pretty much anything that was capable of playing a video game! The NES version is perhaps the most famous, but the Amiga in 1990 would get a very close to arcade perfect port of the game. The arcade version of Ghosts 'n Goblins has been part of a few of the compilations that Capcom has released over the years.
The game is now a series that has multiple games, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts would be released into arcades in 1988 and also be released for home systems as well. The Super Nintendo would get Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts a few years later.
Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins was released for the Sony PSP in 2006 which remade the game using 3D character models. Other recent entries to the series have been released for the iOS.
There are two what are classed as spin off series from Ghosts 'n Goblins. These are the Gargoyles Quest series which is on Game Boy, NES and Super Nintendo and the Maximo series which was on Playstation 2.
